Leisure Industry Week 2016 – A TLS Tour

Leisure Industry Week is an annual exposition of businesses working in or with the leisure industry.

Set in September at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre.

This show gives a great opportunity for those in the relevant trades to network, see new or emerging products & look ahead to see what the next considerations are most likely to be for your business.

This year Total Locker Service sent Sales & Marketing representative Michael to pay a visit.

While opting not to purchase a stand we still made an effort to both be seen and to see everything on show.

As I walked in several things caught my eye but instead of walking towards the banners clearly designed to draw my attention. I decided to turn right where I soon saw a rather ingenious piece of equipment.

For anyone that has never heard of Bubble Football it is a very interesting game to watch but is only one of the five games that Xtreme Active offer.

With equipment rental, School/Holiday club management, classes & sports days this is an interesting organisation.

The next stand I visited was 360°imagery where I had a rather interesting discussion about both photography and Google.

A great way to promote places is tours and with 360° virtualisations, the tours are brought to the computer screen.

As the Gif above will show, learning to snowboard can now be achieved without snow of any kind whatsoever.

It was around this point that Urban Attack’s obstacle course caught my attention.

A word of caution; these obstacle courses require you to have a certain level of fitness.

As someone of slight build and not at the required level to do this course comfortably; I completely skipped one obstacle, received grazed elbows from my complete inability to overcome another and spent so long on the rope climb, that even though I was the first to start running the course that it ended in photo finish with the person who started afterwards.

Great fun and something I would recommend to anyone feeling brave.

The Hygiene Company’s stall was showcasing their Wipepod range, a range of wipe dispensers designed to reduce human contact thus keeping the dispenser hygienic & safe for use.

One product I was very interested to see was AngelEye, this is a drowning detection device distributed in the UK by SPSC.

By using an underwater camera linked to a monitoring system this device has been designed to keep people safe in swimming pool environments by providing an alternative perspective to that normally seen by lifeguards.

One of the more noticeable areas was the setup Esp had to show, a supplier of gym equipment and regular attendee of Leisure Industry Week.

I had a very interesting chat with one of their staff members about the history of the company and their working relationship with the National Exhibition Centre.

While it might be easy to think of keeping fit as just going to the gym or swimming there are all kinds of ways to keep fit.

2 example of interesting ways of doing this that I saw this year were HulaFit & BurLexercise both offering a way to keep fit in addition to building confidence and learning new skills.

I found the presentation by Gantner an interesting one. As someone who has spent half a decade repairing and maintaining Rfid systems, it is nice to see what appear to be new and effective products entering the market.

The Invicta Foundation had a stall raising money to help raise money for wounded soldiers at Leisure Industry Week.

While I could not donate at the time I said that I would mention them here as an effort to spread awareness of the cause.

Boasting that this foam roller “never breaks” and offering a 30-day free trial RAMroller seems an interesting product, a training aid that could be seen more over the next few years and one to watch.

Very tempted to test out just how unbreakable the product really is. 🙂

It’s rare to see two products in the same category aim for such radically different market segments, while Spa Bike utilises warm water to make cycling less strenuous, more effective and can be an effective treatment to circulatory issues.

Cold Tub focusses instead of recovery, reducing swelling and lactic acid build-ups which can allow someone to be ready to train again faster.

Before I left I took the time to watch some bubble football in action, you can see the awesome if ridiculous nature of the game above.

Looking ahead, Construction week is coming soon and I hope that they bring the same level of awesome to the NEC that I saw here and expect to see at next year’s Leisure Industry Week.